Abstract: Based on literatures of rural-urban income gap in 7 domestic authoritative journals from CNKI database from 1998 to 2003, this paper conducts a literature analysis, which focuses on the two main aspects of varying tendency and influencing factors of rural-urban income gap, according to the sequence of literature development and inherent logic relationship. Then it analyzes theory transition and research features of domestic studies on the topic of rural-urban income gap, and tests if the theory development also has periodical the same characteristics as the fluctuation of the realistic rural-urban income gap, hereby analyzes attention of domestic authoritative journals on critical realistic question. The under-researched and the direction of further research are put forward finally.